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Romulan Storyline Rework
shinnok918
Member Posts: 312 Arc User
So with the storyline reworks happening, perhaps its time to look at the romulan main storyline...you know the one that's all about Tovan Khev and not our captains. id like to have a good backstory for my captain, not searching for rhinna khev being the main mission. finding her, ok. make tovan all happy about that, but I don't want the tovan khev show, I want it all about me. even the charva section is mostly about him. either way. a good rework of the romulan storyline would have the added bonus of allowing all of us to finally being able to, oh, idk, dismiss tovan khev, or at least renaming him. I mean this in all seriousness, margainalize him to the point we can be rid of him
you've received enough complaints over the years and stubbornly refuse to change it. I want him at least off my romulan bridge because he isn't even my first officer. my tac/intel officer is. tovan khev is useful for item storage only. and barely good at that.
the added ruined experience in the game is that tovan khev is EVERYONE's first officer if ur a romulan, making visiting any other romulan bridge seem....ridiculous. "wait I just left tovan khev on my bridge, how is he on your bridge"
you've received enough complaints over the years and stubbornly refuse to change it. I want him at least off my romulan bridge because he isn't even my first officer. my tac/intel officer is. tovan khev is useful for item storage only. and barely good at that.
the added ruined experience in the game is that tovan khev is EVERYONE's first officer if ur a romulan, making visiting any other romulan bridge seem....ridiculous. "wait I just left tovan khev on my bridge, how is he on your bridge"
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Those of us old enough to be telling you to get off our lawn know that they already did rework the Romulan stories. And the people love it
Also, everyone gets an Elisa Flores now too. That's just how life is. You might as well be that Klingon who went out to challenge a storm.
On my Romulan characters, Tovan has been relegated to a boff on my shuttles. And I have a different boff selected as my XO on the in-game duty officer page
"He shall be my finest warrior, this generic man who was forced upon me.
Like a badass I shall make him look, and in the furnace of war I shall forge him.
he shall be of iron will and steely sinew.
In great armour I shall clad him and with the mightiest weapons he shall be armed.
He will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight him.
He shall have such tactics, strategies and machines that no foe will best him in battle.
He is my answer to cryptic logic, he is the Defender of my Romulan Crew.
He is Tovan Khev... and he shall know no fear."
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.
A revamp isn't going to happen.
Why is that? Because there's nothing objectively wrong with Tovan. There's plenty of space to subjectively dislike him, personalty types often don't agree with one another (ex. a player character and someone else in the game world that tries to have things be about them for a change). But there's no way in hell that a Romulan revamp to specifically remove this character is justifiable because as much as some people dislike Tovan there's plenty of other people out there who are neutral to the character (or even like him, we can't discount that possibility.) And for all them spending so much time rerecording dialog and changing mission details it would be a disservice to everyone else (when their pet hang ups aren't given such special attention, or even their genuine dissatisfaction with other areas of the game.)
So without any mechanical problems, deficient technical execution, or dysfunction within the context of a multi-faction leveling system (all why previous revamps happened) you just aren't going to see Cryptic spend any time redoing the main Romulan series to accommodate a dismissable Tovan. This was evident when LoR released, and after all this time it should be a certainty.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
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It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
Tovan is your best friend, you both escape the destruction of your colony together, you don't then dump him and go off to conquer the galaxy, you're in this together. He's your bro, your wingman, your brother (in Army terms), you would do anything for him, and vice-versa. The Tal Shiar have kidnapped his sister? To hell with anything else, thats your primary mission. If you can take down the Tal Shiar and help D'Tan rebuild Romulus at the same time, that's a plus. The only thing I'd change is Tovan calling you "sir", that doesn't sit right. I know the RR has a military structure, but this isn't Starfleet.
There are two things I would change, given chance and hindsight:
1) Make Tovan a Superior Romulan Operative. I get that you can't delete him, as he is integral to the storyline (up to a point), BUT he's taking up space that could be filled by a SRO. Bedblocking. So make him a SRO.
2) The discovery of the Iconian Gate on New Romulus SHOULD be part of the storyline, it should be the last episode you do before moving on to the Solanae Arc (or the first episode of the Solanae arc). And that goes for all factions. As it stands at present (hidden away in Rep 5 of the Romulan Rep tree) I didn't actually discover the Gate on New Romulus until well into the Iconian Invasion lmao.
Subsequent playthroughs with new characters made me despise him because he's a fully-voiced NPC who sticks with you throughout the story.
Thovan Kev was a character that allowed a bit more (voiced) exposition to happen along the main story line.
And when I read the OP complaining that he felt like the Romulan story line as somehow Thovan Kev? That sounded quite alien to me.
Thovan Kev was my sidekick. He had his own subplot, but it was mostly auxilliary to everything my Captain did.
Depending on my specific Captain, I was either busy trying to avenge the destruction of my newfound home (and, as I found out, even avenging the destruction of my original home), or help build up a new home for me and my people. I also helped out a friend a bit, but what I really tried was getting allies, identifying my enemies, and (usually) killing them. One of his contact proved inadvertently helpful in getting me into undercover into my enemy - a dangerous task that tested both my skill and my resolve.
I'm not so sure about that. What you get out of the T4 reputation mission is a "wow, a gateway! Neat," moment. That also happens in the story mission. True, there's a little more build up and anticipation with a longer ground section but I don't think that the current setup really breaks flow for new players. It's more of a twist/wrench, but I think it still technically holds together.
Notable missions: Apex [AEI], Gemini [SSF], Trident [AEI], Evolution's Smile [SSF], Transcendence
Looking for something new to play? I've started building Foundry missions again in visual novel form!
while I agree with you, that the plot is the Tovan Khev show, and I would LOVE to kick his TRIBBLE off my ship....
Something else I would LOVE to see, and possibly more likely to happen, is Veril, Satra, D'vex, and even token bigass thug guy get more voiced lines so the plot is less about Tovan and more about your whole crew talking and interacting. It wouldn't fix the Tovan issue but itd make it a bit less annoying and greatly improve the experience by elevating OTHER characters up to a similar state.
Yes, really. I like him a lot, he's my buddy. I gladly help him look for his sister while we're also doing something else, it's what a friend does. I don't understand why people think he's some kind of extra protagonist or something. Yes his story is a thing but I never felt overshadowed by him.
It's pretty much this hard to keep just one timeline intact. ♪
That problem kind of takes care of itself.
Other than that hes great even just down to his abilities he has Rom Operative which when you finally get a set of Superior Ops he still is great for ground combat with plasma spec, Superior Soldier and Superior Stubborn. I may have changed his looks a bit on other characters but 4 Roms characters later and I still think he's fine.
I miss anything?
*looks at his respectful and customized orion boffs* no, have fanservice already.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
See, I can't remember this ever happening. I recall quite a few recommendations, but never an order. Do you remember where these orders given occurred, and what the context was?
I Support Disco | Disco is Love | Disco is Life
Yeah from what I understand the Fehk'Ihri were seeming to be genetically created possibly by the Hur'q a race of insectoid being that had ruled on the Klingon home world in the past before they were beaten. I think the Klingons got their warp tech from salvaged tech of the Hur'q, which is part of why i kinda understand why Klingons don't have as much science ships an seem to develope science-wise much slower in areas. I would agree though it would be nice to see more story elements done with this even leading into a full arc that shows the Hur'q having been working in the quad an then coming back at some point.
Though i would like to add I would love to see more story done on the Bynar race, the humanoids that have neural implants that link a pair together an to their main computer on their homeworld, seeing what kind of ships an culture an look they have would be so nice. Also for me atleast I could see them having a trait that lowers the global cooldown of similar abilities you use, like the 15 second cooldown when using a beam or cannon weapon buffs that send the other single or aoe versions of the ability on a 15 second cd. Though i would also like to see some insectoid races that we can use for characters an boffs, this would take alot of time an resources yet would be quite nice even if they could not have their appearance changed at the tailor other than maybe afew preset changes.
This wasn't a problem the first time around because LoR was fresh and engaging. Second time around it was beginning to strain on me. By the third time I had gone completely around on him.
With Starfleet and KDF characters, you can customise your crew and invent backstories for them, even write out biographies for them. You might have a crew of Vulcans or a KDF ship full of klingons. Or you can fly an Orion vessel and have a crew made up entirely of orions. Or gorn. Or play a multi-ethnic sort of crew, and who you set for your first officer is up to you.
With Torvan it seems like a great idea... if you have one character. If you have more than one it becomes grating because there's somehow TWO Torvans out there, and it kinda makes no sense. There's also a similar problem when you beam down to a shared location zone like New Romulus and other rom characters bring down THEIR Torvans. It's weird and I think a bad gameplay design.
Like, I agree with you that on one level Torvan worked because he was a fully-voiced NPC who shared the story adventure with you, and I also agree that he doesn't really overshadow you. He has his own TRIBBLE going on and his own subplot but that's ok, it's a subplot. They're allowed to do that. But it's the way the game kind of forces you to conform to his presence that I think is at the root of people's dislike.
Also, and this is completely subjective, but after awhile the voice acting just kind of annoys me. That's a bit more complicated and subjective, because the problem is a lot more serious than just one voice actor's quality. Because while I appreciated the effort to fully voice an NPC who was integral to the leveling experience, one aspect that really bugged me is how other NPCs aren't fully voiced.
tovan khev has been a pain in a number of peoples backsides for years now, the official response to tovan khev is that he can not be dismissed because of the storyline and it was assumed everyone would want him and you are given a really good officer to work with on your ship as well.
this is their reason and it wont change.
something from the past, 2014:
Been around since Dec 2010 on STO and bought LTS in Apr 2013 for STO.
Yet my Romulan is the "only" one to have found Mol'Rihan, the Sharien Sword, stuffed Taris, aced Hakeev, etc. etc.
How dare you claim to have done that?
And how dare your Romulan step on my Feddie's toes and claim victory over the Dominion / New Link, True Way, Breen, Borg, Undine, Vaadwaur, Iconians, Noye, etc. etc.? We all know the galaxy runs 100% by the Federation, you green blooded emotional anti-Spocks are just window dressing...
And where's my main's 6th pip? I mean, as the one true (see above), I should not be... marginalized... like the 500 other 5 pip "Fleet Admirals" that Starfleet lets roam the shopping plaza known as ESD Deck 47. I think I've earned the appilation "Lord High Admiral", and as such want to display it prominently (and only me, because we all know the true...
<cheap humor via sarcasm off>
Sadly, when you combine a "single player oriented" storyline in an MMO setting, this is the expected side effect. Millions of heroes of the galaxy, thousands of "unique" whatevers.
Which is why most MMOs never seem to go this deep into a "personal" storyline - You're not the slayer of big-bad X, you're just a cog in the machine of the obviously massive amounts of personnel necessary to play that boss battle. You're not the star of the series, you're just another random insert race and class here that just happens to be part of that setting doing borderline heroics.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
The Romulan entry story arcs still are among the best in terms of story-telling and map design in the game. Until that changes, there is just no sufficient reason to start a rework of them.
Okay This I could really get behind. Finding Veril's father and she is in the party with you and no reaction at all? Seemed flat.
And this might seem trivial, but the beginning where you are asked to join D'tan. You can reply ready to jump right in or say you are not interested. Either way, you are at the fleet and have to say yes. Can we either lose the reluctant line since it never comes up again. Or better yet, use it. Maybe we help out on a few missions but we don't get the RR uniform chit since we didn't join up. Or maybe instead of dropped in the office and have to accept, D'tan talks to us to convince us that unity is better than running and hiding. After all it wasn't his group that attacked Virinat. It was the Tal Shiar with unknown alien allies. Or maybe when you try and find a new home for yourself and your ship full of refugees you keep hitting those Tal Shiar enforcers till you find you are assumed to be with D'tan anyway and no one else will take you in since you seem to be a trouble magnet.
Originally Posted by pwlaughingtrendy
Network engineers are not ship designers.
Nor should they be. Their ships would look weird.